[Dixielandjazz] Jazz is not a museum piece

Fri Dec 29 10:57:24 PST 2006

Steve Said: Many of those folks
want not to hear a jazz take by today's greats, but a nostalgic rendition of
some dead guy's version.
________________________________
I think you are right - The guy that plays cornet for me can do an excellent 
Harry James and the people love it.  A lot of us sell nostalgia and I see 
nothing wrong with it.  A big band leader that I have been playing with for 
many years has some tunes in his library that the only thing about the tunes 
is that they have the same names as standard tunes.  Occasionally someone 
takes issue.  We used to do Christmas concerts in malls and such places when 
I was in the AF band and we had some rock and jazz versions of traditional 
Christmas Carols.  Boy did we get negative reactions on those.

Many people just aren't ready to hear their favorite old tune done 
differently.

Trouble is that's the whole rationale behind DJ's who can do that at a bush 
of a button.
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 12:02 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Jazz is not a museum piece

> Butch Thompson <butte1 at mac.com> wrote (polite snip)
>
>> It's hard to fight the perception
>> that we're in the nostalgia racket, isn't it?
>
> Now that is one knowledgeable statement, from a knowledgeable guy and an
> expert player of OKOM. It conjures up all sorts of discussion points about
> what business, or racket many OKOM bands are in. And how we are perceived 
> by
> audiences as well as critics out in the world. Consider what Sudhalter 
> says
> about Dixieland in Lost Chords: (page 296)
> ---
> "The listening audience, moreover, was aging; in that generational way
> peculiar to American fans, it embraced the music more tenaciously, and 
> less
> for strictly musical reason than personal and psychological. It symbolized
> their youth, the well,(if selectively) remembered time in their lives when
> the future seemed limitless, immortality was theirs for the asking. 
> Reminded
> them of a Zeitgeist vivid and enjoyable, before time and change edged it
> into memory." . . .
>
> "The Poet Philip Larkin, a hot music fan since his undergraduate days at
> Oxford in the 30s, caught it deftly when he described 'men whose first
> coronary is coming like Christmas; who drift helplessly with commitments 
> and
> obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age 
> and
> incapacity, deserted by everything that once made life sweet.'"
>
> "George Frazier, celebrating a long-ago evening at Nick's, also 
> understood.
> 'The beers are short and there is never a moment when you can't cut the
> smoke with the crease in your pants. (Downbeat 1941) . . . but there are
> still those of us who . .  in the days to come will think of it and be
> stabbed, not with any fake emotion, but with a genuinely heart breaking
> nostalgia. We will think of this place at 7th Avenue and 10th Street, and
> all, of a sudden the fragrant past  . . . will sneak up on us and for a
> little while we will be all the sad young men.'"
>
> " . . . hyped to death as good time party music  by the promotional
> machinery of journalism and public relations. It takes only a brief look 
> at
> the covers of 'Dixieland' LPs issued in the late 1950s and early '60s to 
> see
> the result; straw hats and candy-striped blazers, such album titles as 
> 'That
> Happy Dixieland Jazz' and 'Dixieland My Dixieland'; breathless sleeve 
> notes
> likening bands playing this form of jazz to barbershop quartets, Stanley
> Steamers, and Fourth of July fireworks displays."
> ---
> 40 years ago I attended a business seminar where the speaker opined that 
> in
> reality, each one of us had five different personas. They included:
> 1) Who we really are; 2) Who we think we are; 3) Who we would like to be; 
> 4
> Who others would like us to be and 5) Who others think we are. Number 5 
> was
> the key because it is how we are perceived and that's what counts.
>
> IMO, the business we band leaders and players of OKOM are in, depends upon
> the audience for whom we perform. If we are playing in front of old folks 
> at
> Jazz Society Concerts, or at OKOM Festivals, perhaps we are in the 
> nostalgia
> business whether we like it or not. Haven't we all gotten a request for 
> say
> "I Can't Get Started" by some knowledgeable old fan, who after the 
> trumpeter
> finishes playing it, comes back and says with obvious disappointment; 
> "That
> didn't sound like Bunny," And the guys who played it to that reaction
> included greats like Randy Reinhart, or Jon Erik Kellso. Many of those 
> folks
> want not to hear a jazz take by today's greats, but a nostalgic rendition 
> of
> some dead guy's version.
>
> On the other hand, there are some OKOMers playing today, for young
> audiences, who hear the music for what it is right now, not what it was,
> back in the good old days. They are not in the nostalgia business. Kenny
> Davern was a player like that.
>
> Yep, perception of what we do as bands is key, and the nostalgia 
> perception
> is out there big and bold. Let's change it.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
>
>
>
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